Intensity-based targets for the oil sands are inadequate

“The federal government is using Alberta’s greenhouse-gas emissions target – criticized as too accommodating to industry – as the launching point for a national oil and gas carbon policy, even as the province itself looks to toughen those standards.

Alberta today requires large energy companies to achieve a 12-per-cent reduction in emissions, on a per-barrel ‘intensity’ basis that allows overall emissions to still climb dramatically.

That 12-per-cent standard “is part of the conversation, for sure” as the federal government seeks to write its rules, Environment Minister Peter Kent said in an interview Friday.”

Intensity-based targets ignore the main source of pollution associated with the oil sands: the actual barrels of synthetic crude that the oil sands industry exists to produce. Inescapably, when those barrels are burned, the carbon they contain will be added to the already-dangerously-large stock of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

We need a plan to wind down the oil sands as a whole as part of a fair global transition to a carbon neutral economy. We certainly don’t need a regulatory regime that permits continued growth in oil sands output.